Saturday, January 16, 2010

No more vegetables

Someone asked about my vegetable patch and I regret to say that I have stopped growing vegetables in my patio. I've only just disposed of the last of the big white styrofoam boxes and other paraphernalia used for vegetable growing.

As much as I would love to continue growing vegetables in my patio, I just couldn't cope with the amount of disease and pests that were invading my garden. Edibles are well, edible, so they are a magnet for these undesirable creatures. I could never eat the vegetables because the leaves were covered with white flies and other pathogens. These pesky things invade the non-edible section too. They were everywhere! My rose got hit, so did the curry and rosemary shrubs. My garden was always sick.

Strangely, these pests disappeared the moment I stopped growing edibles. The other plants started thriving again. The herbs are so healthy now, not to mention the other non-edibles. I can now declare my garden pest free again.

I must admit that my garden was quite an eye sore during the vegetable growing days. There were boxes of chyesim, raddish, lettuce and spinach growing in every corner in a most unruly fashion, my garden was quite messy. Now that the boxes are gone, I've gained so much space I promptly ordered a new set of patio furniture and a large parasol.

I'm not quite sure what my garden will be like in future but I know I'll always be a gardener. In fact, I forgot to mention that I have newly germinated spinach and tomatoes outside. I'm sure there will always be some vegetables growing in my patio, just not as much as before.

5 comments:

Blur Ting, I have been getting rid of pests also! I wonder if the cloudy and rainy weather last month has anything to do with these pests. The other thing that worries me are those tiny snails. I suspect they got into my containers from the bottom. I used good soil but I still end up having tiny snails??? Currently, I really dislike those white alphid and mealy bug. They seems to be immortal.

Now that you have gotten rid of the pests, I hope your plants will grow healthily quickly.

I have similar problem with pests when I grow chai sim & lady fingers in my garden. It attracted a lot of white flying pests that I suspect are mealy bugs. I didn't manage to eat much of the chai sim. I still have not thrown away my styrofoam boxes coz I have replaced the vegies with basils. But they don't seem to grow healthily lately.

JC - Basils are quite easy to grow. They need sunlight and well drained soil. Best thing is they don't attract pests. What I do when mine gets too straggly is cut the upper half of the plant off and let new leaves grow.

Have you tried permaculture methods for reducing pests? I'm no expert at all, and have just looked at this recently, but the idea is to grow prest-repellent plants alongside the attractive plants - lavender, basil and citrus (I think) repel insects, marigolds repel underground worms (nematodes) etc. Also plants that attract lady-birds, which eat these pesky critters! It might be worth looking at?